The international community should recognize the Taliban government

The world is a brutal place. There is a time and a place and a manner in which to fight for human dignity. That place is not Afghanistan. That manner can never be a military occupation against the wishes of a population.

Advocates of America's forever-wars are aghast at the loss of strategic real-estate on the Eurasian continental shelf. The same can be said of many sensible progressive in Europe -I count myself, to a degree, as one of them. The situation seems to present a catch-22 to those who believe - as everyone should - in democracy, human rights, women's rights, and immunity from being murdered willy nilly.

In the West, the dominant narrative seems to suggest that in a place like Afghanistan such ideals can only be achieved under the auspices of selfless idealists, parachuted in from faraway places that have more experience in these matters. Oh, and backed up by brute force, relentless B-52 raids, drone strikes, night time special forces raids, bombed weddings, bombed funerals, and bombed hospitals. A small price to pay for the privilege of being able to attend a workshop on 'civil society capacity building' or 'grassroots empowerment'.

It's not that atrocities committed by Western troops were not reported on in Western mainstream news outlets. They were, and are, albeit in rapid-fire fashion, almost subliminally appearing and disappearing, laden with euphemisms like "precision strikes” or “Islamic extremist terrorists hiding among civilians.” While Taliban fighters are Islamic extremists and Afghan resistance fighters against an invading force, the latter is brushed over –lest they garner any kind of sympathy.

Let's be honest. The objective of the US-led military occupation of Afghanistan was not to install democracy, or to liberate women. Despite umpteen NGO workers' honest efforts to do precisely that. Just to refresh one's memory, the pretext for the invasion was to bring to justice a citizen of Saudi-Arabia suspected of masterminding the attacks of 9/11. That man, Osama Bin Laden, was killed during a single night-time raid, not in Saudi-Arabia or in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan. This happened in 2011. Yet the occupation of Afghanistan dragged on for another decade. Are we to chalk all of this up to inertia and 'mission creep'? Now that we've had enough, we just pack our toys and stomp out, cake and lemonade upturned on the floor?

To some, the helter-skelter Western pullback is cast as a final, overdue high-water mark of U.S. imperialism. The beginning of the end. Because the Soviet exit from Afghanistan in 1989 preceded the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., by rough analogy, the same must be true of the steeled American grip on world affairs. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping rejoice. The end is nigh! (One could be forgiven to forget that the fall of Saigon likewise failed to augur in a more humble version of American hegemonic aspirations.)

My beef is not with the hard-nosed advocates of the hydra that is the American, and to a lesser European, military-industrial complex. The scorpion does as the scorpion does. It's with staunch liberals led astray by a false dilemma. One that's being force-fed day after day by Western pundits: only force can bring enlightenment. Benign coercion will keep the hordes at bay. Human Rights-trampling dictators like Egypt's Sisi regularly avail themselves of this argument while shopping for Western arms or tacit approval for democracy-quashing tactics. “It's us or chaos.” By and large, we've acquiesced to this ridiculous, if comfortable – not to mention profitable – rationale.

By extension, liberal 'realists' seem to have internalised the view that the American umbrella, nuclear or otherwise, is a necessary yet bearable evil. The view is made palatable by the fact that it's 'others', in a galaxy far away, that are doing most of the 'bearing'. And dying. At the very least, one argues, subconsciously perhaps, the endless grinding of nameless flesh and bones keeps us safe from Russian or Chinese domination. Again, the timeless spectre of raging hordes from the east haunts our nightmares...

Did we simply pick a battle ground neither side of this geo-strategic card game cares about? Is it necessary to think that Putin's Russia, Xi Jinping's China, or the Taliban are a force for good to conclude that occupying Afghanistan for twenty years was in any way moral or advantageous to anyone involved?

According to a Brown University study, over the past 20 years, 241.000 Afghans were killed, including 71.000 civilians. That's 10 civilians per day, every day, for 20 years. News agency AP counted 47.245 civilians (the most conservative estimation I could find). Theconversation.com says: "at least 100.000 Afghan civilians killed or injured in the conflict between the U.S.-led coalition and Afghans resisting its occupation of their country. This number should be considered an undercount, as many Afghan casualties were buried quickly following Islamic customs, and records were not kept."

The takeover of Afghanistan to the Taliban is portrayed as a collective Western defeat, a genuflection to barbarianism, an abdication of enlightened values, and harbinger of worse to come. But it's not the 'fall' of Kabul to an indigenous fighting force – however brutal they might be – that is a failure of Western idealism and democratic aspirations, but its invasion and 20-year occupation.

But it did happen. Was it truly all in vein as some defeatists claim? “They didn't want our democracy at the point of a gun, so they must be culturally incompatible with freedom.” Or worse: “Maybe democracy itself is flawed, freedom overrated. Look at China, thriving without a hint of either.”

Although never the primary objective, nation-building did take place. A generation of girls and boys did go to school (albeit far from universally as is sometimes suggested). If we truly believe in democracy and human rights, then surely, at the minimum, non-governmental do-gooders prepared a substantial cohort of Afghan society to engage with their conservative compatriots. The work has not ended. For Afghanistan, only now it can begin in earnest.

If the West truly feels humbled, can we judge the incoming Taliban-led Afghan government to the same low bar NATO seemed to have set for itself? How much individual injustice, human rights or women's rights infractions at the hands of Afghans, are a fair price to pay for stability, an end to the daily haemorrhaging of human life that drenched the past 20 years? Do 'we' even have a right to answer that question? Let alone to arm an anti-Taliban warlord, as French 'intellectual' Bernard Levy ardently pleads.

Arguably, a refusal by the international community to recognise the new regime, to concede the reality that all Afghans who can't get away will have no choice but to accept, in effect choking the population of vital trade, resources and aid, on account of a supposed lack of legitimacy, is preposterous, and quite frankly tantamount to gangsterism. It's the kind of thinking that got us Afghans into this mess. Sanctions are a sure-fire way to the next disaster.

The world is a dangerous place. It's indeed time to take a stand for democracy, equality, and human dignity. Right here, in the West. Right now.